Warpaths - John Keegan

Geography and military history have come to explain each other in North America as they do nowhere else in the world. From the arrival of the Europenans in the 16th century to the final defeat of the native Americans in the 19th, climate and competition for resources explain why men fortified where they did, campaigned as they did and were drawn to the battlefields where the control of the continent was decided. Warpaths begins with the establishment of New France on the St Lawrence River and the French conflicts with the Indians and British - culminating with the English defeat at Yorktown. There follows Civil War between North and South, as well as the Indian wars. The book ends with the final twist in the story of European warfare in North America, as American and Canadian forces arrive to save Britain and liberate France in the Second World War.